I'm hungry, what's for lunch?

about

me:

I don’t forage in the traditional sense, I do my foraging in restaurants. There are so many delicious bites to experience in the Bay Area, join me as I explore menus, searching out specialties and fabled dishes and share them here with you. Occasionally I post my favorite recipes, but mostly I’m out there eating and taking photos along the way.

The information that I post up may resemble restaurant reviews, but I’m not a critic; I am an enthusiast and tend to focus on things that I liked about a restaurant or meal. All of these meals are paid for with my own dime, and shhhhh, I admit that I regularly peruse the boards at chowhound for inspiration and occasionally resort to consulting the unreliable oracle called Yelp to research recommended dishes…

photography:

I have an avid interest in photography. If you haven’t already read this fantastic post on Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen, you should. It is an excellent resource on home lighting techniques that has proven to be revelatory for me. I bought a single Lowel EGO light and keep it in my kitchen for taking pics of food, which I do very rarely I might add…

My main cameras right now are :

iPhone 7+ I love the depth of field setting and the bigger screen.

Panasonic Lumix G2, it’s not a DSLR, but accepts interchangeable micro four thirds lenses. My favorite lens for food photography is the Leica 45 mm. It takes beautiful pictures but has some serious limitations… like I generally have to be around 2-3 feet back from the plate for a super closeup shot! I am saving up in my piggy bank for the superfast Voigtlander .95 lens.

I often eat at restaurants at night, most of whom have dim mood lighting, so sometimes I use the flashlight feature on my phone for additional illumination. So, yeah, that crazy person using her phone as a flashlight at the table across the room last night at the restaurant you dined at? That was probably me…

Nice job, Sandy! I’m amazed at how much pride you take in your food reviews and photos. I wanted to take your moniker but felt it would be cheap. I’ve chosen to go by Food Slut but not sure if I can match your expertise…

Hi Bruce, thanks for the compliment! I use 2 point and click digicams. I take a Fuji F20 everywhere because it is pretty small and takes really nice low-light pictures especially in restaurants. I have a Panasonic LX-1 that is somewhat larger but takes better pictures (thanks to the gorgeous Leica lens), except for low-light situations. Since most of my pictures are food pictures taken indoors, I end up using the Fuji more.

I chuckled as I read your “about me” as I am much the same-camera in hand at all meals. We love to cook, eat, drink wine, travel where the food and drink are excellent. Just returned from yet another trip to Thailand (Hua Hin and BKK this time) plus a marvelous trip to Siem Reap and Phnom Pinh-ate our way through the country-yummmm!

Now planning the next trip – this summer to Serbia and back to Montenegro which we love and a hop over to Dubrovnik again. Just can’t get enough of the the Balkans-love the people-food and drink and the sights are awesome too.

DH is commuting to Houston-poor boy and is missing our great foodie spots here, and the family weekend feasts. He even missed the spit roasted piggy last weekend.

I am reaching out to you as a fellow food enthusiast and fan of your blog. I genuinely appreciate the perspective on food you provide for your readers in the Bay Area.

As part of the outreach team for Full Circle, an organic produce and artisan grocery delivery service that delivers to Washington, Idaho, Alaska and soon, northern California, I am contacting you with an offer to participate in our sneak peek promotion ahead of our expansion into the Bay Area starting in April

The sneak peek promotion will include $200 worth of service from Full Circle. Depending on the box size you order and the amount of additional groceries you purchase, this should afford you about 4 weeks of free food delivered to you from Full Circle – a great way to try out our program and enjoy a whole lot of local farm fresh fruits, veggies and other groceries while you’re at it!

If you are interested in participating, please reply to me (sarahb@fullcircle.com) and provide your zip code so we can verify delivery service in your area. The promotion will begin the week of March 12th and I will provide all the sign up information and promo codes then. After you’re signed up, you will have access to your personalized member account where you will be able to completely customize your order on a weekly basis, shop for other groceries in our Green Grocery section and enjoy the complete Full Circle service at your leisure.

There is no commitment involved and you are not required to make additional purchases after your promotional period ends. We simply hope that your participation will inspire you to cook, photograph and write about the food and your experience. We do not require any reviews but hope you will want to share your observations with your readers.

If you are interested in participating (and I hope you are!) please reply to me by March 5th. I look forward to hearing from you.

Hi, I visited your site and would like to connect regarding nSphere syndicating your content. We are interested in syndicating your content into our network. There’s no cost for this, we ask you to place a module on your site that reads your content and syndicates it into our network of millions of users. You only need to place a simple JavaScript code on your site. I have the code, but I would like to speak or email with you first.

This module acts as search tool for your users as well. Can you email me, call me, or send me your number and a good day/time to connect please?

Hi there,
We recently came upon a photo that you took at Bocanova restaurant in Oakland and we’d love to be able to submit it for a cookbook, as they are looking for the specific photo of the scallop dish. It turns out that your’s is much nicer than the one we have on file. If this interests you, please let me know your full name and if you are OK with the photo credit. The name of the book is Smash Mouth’s Recipes from the Road. Many thanks for your time and consideration. Kind Regards,
Erica

Restaurant Cuvee Napa is hosting the next amazing Cochon Heritage Fire event THIS SATURDAY in a grassy field overlooking the Napa River just behind the River Terrace Inn. It’s an all-you-can-eat-and-drink extravaganza featuring 15 of the best grillmasters from around the country. Discounted tickets are available ONLY through Cuvee, so feel free to send out my email address and the restaurant phone number of 707-224-2330. Tickets can be purchased all the way up to and during the event, which runs from 3-6pm. And I’d like to invite you and a friend to be my guests at the event!

My name is Connor and I am working for a new recommendations startup that is recruiting bloggers with great taste to provide early reviews for our product. Since our last contact, Livestar has completely transformed itself– we would love for you to join us.

I was browsing through your reviews and thought you might be a great fit. We currently have an iPhone app which we would like you to download and contribute your reviews to. In return, you would presented as a Featured Tastemaker in our app.

If you’re interested please email me at connor (at) livestar (dot) com and we can provide more details.

Hey,
I’ve noticed you share a lot of great content about your food adventures around the Bay Area. I’m working for a new start-up called HeyLets and we’re trying to get people excited about doing what you do. We want our users to rediscover their city through mini-recommendations from people with similar interests and hopefully pay it forward. I was wondering, would you be interested in sharing some of your positive experiences in your community with us? We’d love to hear what you have to say and help you promote your blog.
Drop me a line if you’re interested in more info: adam@heylets.com
Thanks for your time and keep up the good work!
-Adam

Hi, My name is Alexey Kuvaytsev and I am contacting you regarding you professional field of expertise – food media.
First I would like to say that your blog is so cool. It is very interesting and creative project. After reading a couple of articles and food reviews I was impressed by your style and approach
to share information. I like your way of going away from cliches and formats. Currently I live in SF and work with my team in food tech start-up and would like to get you feedback on our idea.
Here’s a brief summary of our idea:

Cookstream.tv
is an new online interactive cooking experience. Our platform brings together foodies with professional chefs and gives them the opportunity to cook together through online live cooking classes.
This is a great opportunity for food lovers to learn how to cook from a professional in the comfort of their home at a time that is convenient for them. For professional chefs our platform gives a way of establishing credibility and their brand on the web, market themselves to new customers, as well as monetize existing ones through sale of online cooking classes. We also see it as a way of driving more people to their existing businesses (restaurants, catering services, etc).

The Menuism team would like to invite you to participate in an exclusive food blogger survey!

Your response will be featured in a blog post alongside other top bloggers in San Francisco, giving you free exposure to a broad audience. As an added bonus, the article may get selected for republication through our Huffington Post account.

hello, my company bay roots is a start up hemp seed food company, just moved off of the Hawaiin island maui to expand our production, and source our ingredients in northern California. I am interested in reaching the people who visit foodhoe for my indiegogo campaign that we just launched April 28th. What would it take to be featured on your blog?
Link: igg.me/at/bayroots

A little about what we make: We use the hemp seed, along with other organic ingredients to bring to the dinner plate a really special veggie burger, we call it a hemp burger. It has 18g of plant based protein in it, and is not yet produced by any other food companies or sold in stores. We as a couple and as business partners made the jump across the pond from maui to our new residence in orinda California to bring these hemp burgers to the west coast communities, and to bring the nutritional benefits of hemp into the american diet.
I think your readers will enjoy the story behind our entrepreneurial journey, and may even discover our hemp burger is something they’d like to try for themselves in the sanfransisco Bay Area.
bayroots.comhttp://www.facebook.com/bayrootshemp

Hey there, could you please give me a call 310-913-8796 or email me at lexie@ncompassonline.com? Chef Ryan Scott from Market & Rye will be in San Francisco THIS Saturday October 12th only, at the 13th & Harrison Best Buy Store from 1-4p showcasing small appliances to create amazing and delicious recipes. I hope you can come by. May we schedule an interview? Call me please. With such a huge nearby residential community, we know lots of people would enjoy this experience! Help us spread the word?

I wanted to gauge your interest in sampling and featuring Giovanni Rana pasta and sauces (www.giovannirana.com) as the products recently became available in San Francisco in Safeway stores. And with Thanksgiving around the corner, busy home cooks can use Giovanni Rana products in a variety of ways to create a quick pasta course for the holiday feast, to spice up any traditional dish or make the most of everyone’s favorite part of the festivities – leftovers! Giovanni Rana is a renowned pasta master in Italy whose family last year launched its first full-service restaurant and state-of-the-art factory in the U.S. The factory is now producing the Giovanni Rana retail line of 13 varieties of flat and filled pastas and four sauces including Marinara, Bolognese, Alfredo and Pesto. Some highlights of the products:
• Healthy and high-quality ingredients: The fillings are created from artisanal ingredients including DOP Parmigiano Reggiano cheese imported by the wheel and DOP Genovese basil
• Thin pasta: Mr. Giovanni Rana created proprietary machinery (being used at the U.S. factory) that mimics the movements used to create handcrafted pasta to produce an exceptionally thin pasta with a delicate bite
• Speed: Because the pasta is fresh and impossibly thin, it cooks in boiling water in under 4 minutes

As mentioned, we’d be happy to send you a variety of our pasta and sauces for you to try out on your own. For the holiday, we’ve included a Thanksgiving-inspired recipe rich in warm Fall flavors below and you can also visit the Giovanni Rana website (www.giovannirana.com) for more background on the company and other recipe ideas. Thanks so much for your consideration.

Method:
Toast almonds in a dry pan over medium heat, constantly tossing until fragrant. Transfer to a cool dish. Add butter to pan and melt with a pinch of Kosher salt over medium heat until milk solids are browned and foam subsides; remove from heat.

Have you heard of Sprig: dinner on demand? Its an app you download to your iphone and in under 30 minutes you will be delivered a hot, local, sustainable meal with top notch free range ingredients. Check out http://www.eatsprig.com and bring the foraging straight to your dining room!

I’m working with a start-up for food bloggers in Southern California called Tabelog (www.tabelog.us). They’re a subsidiary of the largest company in Japan Tabelog.com (similar to Yelp here in the US).

We’re bringing their annual restaurant awards to the US that are judged solely by a panel of local food bloggers (all online). The winning restaurants get a framed 2014 award and the food bloggers get an “official judge” icon/etc and related PR for their blog. We’re looking for bloggers from the Southern California area to invite as an official judge. Is this something that you would be interested in?

My name is Thoi Trinh and I am a Restaurant Manager at Lark Creek Blue in Santana Row, San Jose. I have been following your blog for some time and really admire your enthusiasm for food. I would love to have you join me for dinner at our restaurant. Being a foodie myself, I am excited to share some of our ocean-fresh seafood dishes with you. All of our products are from sustainable sources, one example is our long term partnership with the Monterey Aquarium Seafood Watch program. We are working on extending our relationship with the food blogging community. Please contact me at your convenience at ttrinh@larkcreek.com for a chat.

Hello there, I recently discovered Pomme d’amore at Knead, and while searching online I stumbled onto your blog, which apparently you have discovered that back in 2012!
By the way, if you like pastries, please check out teaandbuns.com, we are on a quest to bring all the best pastries in bay area to the doorsteps of San Franciscans! If you would like a free box during our “soft launch”, please sign up on the site, or shoot me an email. We’d love your suggestions too.
The best thing about working in this new venture is that I now have a legit excuse to try all the pastries in town, and I love pastries so much.
I sure will come back more often to check out your blogs, and hope to hear from you.

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you, but I was just wondering whether you were currently accepting content for your website?

I am an experienced freelance writer, who holds a real interest in providing valuable information and advice to the public and I’d love to write an article for you. I have written for a range of sites and magazine publications in different niches.

I am open to ideas, and would be able to send you unique content.

Would this be of interest to you?

Please do get in touch, and I’ll get an article over to you in the next day or so.

My name is Stephen Lean and I am the Vice President of Sales with a new and innovative mobile-based social media loyalty program based in Toronto called MoPals. I wanted to reach out to you and send the below information about MoPals which provides you with an overview about our company and how MoPals is an alternative to other social media and loyalty companies such as Foursquare, Yelp, Groupon, and Air Miles, one of the largest loyalty rewards programs in Canada.

I found your name and website Foodhoe’s Foraging as I was looking for food and restaurant bloggers in San Francisco and thought you might be interested in learning more about MoPals. If the information about MoPals interests you, you can sign up as a user by logging onto the MoPals website at http://www.mopals.com and download the MoPals mobile app at the following link if you have an Android Device: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mopals.app or you can search for MoPals on Google Play.

Once you have signed up to MoPals as a user you can start to earn MoCoins, which is our digital rewards currency for simply writing reviews, sharing photos, purchasing and sharing offers and checking-in to your favorite businesses using the MoPals mobile app. You can also earn MoCoins for simply inviting and signing up new friends to join the MoPals community as users and adding new businesses to the MoPals database if that business is not in our database.

MoPals, along with Tesco, Bloomingdale’s and Starbucks has also recently been honored with a “COLLOQUY Recognizes” award, a new program that honors the companies, programs and initiatives that exemplify the most innovative advancements and forward-thinking strategies in loyalty marketing.

MoPals is a community-driven and crowdsourced loyalty platform that bridges the gap between social media and loyalty programs. An experiential and Big Data-driven platform, MoPals rewards its members for both social and transactional behaviors. MoPals uses an exclusive digital currency to foster an exciting community where consumers are rewarded for purchases at participating businesses, as well as engaging in a wide range of social media activities that enhance brand value.

If you have any questions about MoPals, please do not hesitate to reach out to me and I can provide you with more information about MoPals.

I’m writing you today to invite you a preview tasting of my new venture called Hal Jr’s Bar B Q.

Hal Jr’s Bar B Q Is Kansas City style bar b q meat, slow cooked for 10-12 hours in a real hardwood smoker, using a blend of hardwood oak charcoal, hickory & applewood. It’s a secret KC- style spicy dry rub, with a tomato molasses based sauce served on the side. Sides vary from the traditional such as mac n cheese & baked beans, to the locally inspired corn salad.

You may be curious about me. My name is Jason Lund. I was born & raised in St. Louis, which fostered my love of midwestern BBQ. I perfected my cooking craft in a variety of kitchens in Lawrence, KS & New York City, before taking a brief hiatus. Now, I’m back and excited to bring the midwestern BBQ i loved and grew up on here to San Francisco.

Please join us at Mission Minis, September 20th at 7:30 , for our first preview tasting. I’m excited to show you what I’ve been working on!

I’m a fellow restaurant food blogger who is somewhat new to the SF Bay area. I’m attempting to contact as many of the involved local bloggers as I can because I’m interested in starting a food-blogger group here in SF that’s based on a group I belonged to in Boston. This group was called the Boston Brunchers and we met once a month at a popular or new restaurant in Boston. The restaurant would offer us complementary brunch in exchange for our honest blog reviews about the food and establishment. We would only be required to post within two weeks of attending. It was a great opportunity for bloggers to network and get together with others who share their interests. It allowed bloggers, photographers, marketing gurus, journalists, communications professionals, and people representing so many more professions to come together and inspire each other, all while eating great food and helping promote a restaurant through doing what they love – eating and blogging about it.

Please email me with your email address or respond to this comment if you are interested in receiving more information, and if this sounds like something in which you’d be interested in participating.

I saw that you liked the town of Rosarito, Mexico. I hope the next time you come down this way, you check out our new restaurant there. Chef Bo hails from Casablanca Morocco and she has paired up with two Mexican chefs creating a fusion she calls Moroxican. Happy holidays and have a great New Year.

I just reviewed foodhoe.com, and was very impressed with how you have been managing it. I noticed you may be working or worked with BlogHer in the past which is why I’m reaching out to you. At LinkVehicle, we are a one stop shop for bloggers. We’ve been specializing in sponsored posts and social campaigns since 2010. Most recently, we have added hundreds of affiliate offers, CPC offers, and video ads that can be selected to run on your site.

To start making money, the first step is to sign up as a publisher at LinkVehicle.com. Once your account is created, you will then be able to set your own prices. You can tell us how much you need to receive in order to do a sponsored post or sponsored social campaign. You will always have complete editorial control. Once you become a LinkVehicle blogger you will be given access to all of our affiliate offers, CPC offers, and video ads where you will be able to choose which ads you want to run.

Just to give you a little background about our company, LinkVehicle is a five year old network of like-minded bloggers created by a team with 25 years of combined blog marketing experience. We have a full staff of US based employees in Stratford, CT. We are happy to assist you with any questions you may have and walk you through every step of the way.

You’ve worked hard building your audience – let us help you monetize it! Again, start today by signing up below.

We’re having an SF launch event next week, and I totally want you to come – we love your blog! Our app is Flavour and if you think Yelp is “the unreliable oracle” then I think you’ll like what we’re doing.

Oh, and we’re serving foie gras in honor of the repeal. Email me and I’d like to send you the invite!

I work for a company called R3lish (pronounced “relish”), and we look for the best businesses and experts to connect with our users.

We discovered you (gorgeous shot of the Noodles with Peanut Sauce from San Tung; will definitely have to check it out) and want to highlight and promote your business to our users. And because people always ask, the answer is “no, there’s no catch. We do this at our expenses. There are no strings attached.”

You can see why we would like to do this work with you in the brief “About R3lish” and “Our Insiders” outline below. And this quote from a R3lish user gives a good sense for what drives us: “my partner liked the Third Rail Story, took a friend there, and now it’s his favorite bar in SF!”

Please let me know if you are interested in a short phone call.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
–Wayne

Wayne West
Partnerships Manager
R3lish, Inc.
1.808.285.0676

About R3lish
——————
R3lish believes advertising needs a reboot.

People around the world tell us about their passions in areas from food and fashion to travel and technology. But everyone makes it clear they’re tired of being interrupted by traditional advertising while they’re enjoying something else.

To connect people with their passions, we rethought the ad industry and reimagined ads themselves. It started by eliminating the interruption and irrelevance. And it continues with a new format that gives businesses a clear, compelling voice: authentic, “micro-video” Stories with Inside Scoops directly from merchants.

Our Insiders (aka “R3lishers”)
——————
In our upcoming release, we’re announcing “profiles” to allow merchants and Insiders (our “R3lishers”) to better connect and communicate with people who share their passion. This is a great opportunity for businesses and experts to establish an early presence on a new mobile video platform.

If you could turn back the clock and be one the first people to have a Twitter account, and have yourself promoted on the platform as someone of influence, would you jump in?
That’s the situation we are in right now.

We believe you would be a great R3lisher to promote and feature on R3lish, and hope to have a chance to chat.

As two companies located in your coverage area, we thought you’d be interested in our new Cold-Pressed Cocktail Bar, and would love to send you a press release detailing the information.

As detailed in the release, Oakland Juice & Co. is teaming up with Verbena in the creation of this bar. It is a completely new perspective on the normal nightlife event offering an option for those who are health conscious. We are using fresh, locally sourced, seasonal fruits and vegetables juices to mix our cocktails making them both nutritious and delicious!

If you are interested in learning more, I could send over our press release that goes into more detail. Should you require additional information, I can be reached at 248-766-5390 or via email at hillary@drinkverbena.com. Additional information can also be found at www. drinkverbena.com and http://www.oaklandjuiceandco.com.

Hello! Love your blog and photography and would love to invite you to attend/cover an upcoming tasting benefit featuring 45+ of the best eats and drinks from around the Bay. Take a look and give a shout with any questions 🙂http://www.platebyplate.org/event-sf/

As a Bay Area food lover, we thought you might be interested in our growing cookie empire, based in Oakland. We make the best alfajores on the planet. They are simply ‘de rechupete.’ We are currently expanding our kitchen facilities to keep up with demand. I’d love to send you a cookie sampler so you can test our product. Think chocolate espresso alfajore. Need we say more?

Hi Food Hoe,
Tina here, wife of Ed (from Yuma). I really enjoyed reading about the cameras you have been using. Your photos are great. Had not heard about that Lytro. I’m a photo enthusiast too, got a used Canon Rebel Ti1 from a friend and bought some lenses to try. After reading about that Lowel EGO light, I think I’ll get one and experiment a little. As you said, the post from Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen on lighting techniques was very informative. Glad we found out you were blogging. Ya, we’re slow on the up-take.

I work for the Oakland Zoo and came across your gorgeous food pics from Walk in the Wild. We would be ecstatic to use them in our annual report and other publications. Is this something you would be open to?